Modifying a deployed Information Store schema

i2 Analyze supports a limited set of small changes to the Information Store schema in a production deployment. In general, if your changes only add to the existing schema, you can apply them without the disruption that more significant changes can cause.

About this task

After you deploy i2 Analyze with an Information Store, you can generally make additive changes to the Information Store schema, but not destructive ones. For example, you can add new item types, and add new property types to existing item types, but you cannot remove types from the schema. For more information about the changes that you can make, see Permitted Information Store schema changes.

Destructive schema changes include removing item types or property types. Removing types can result in an Information Store with data that is not valid according to the schema. To make destructive changes to the schema, you must remove any data from the system and re-create its databases. For more information about performing destructive schema changes or replacing the schema, see Replacing the Chart Store or Information Store schema.

If you follow this procedure in a deployment that provides high availability, you must complete each step and run each command on every Liberty server in your environment before you move to the next step or command.

Procedure

The following steps describe how to make small changes to the schema in a production deployment of i2 Analyze that includes an Information Store.

Locate the XML file that contains the Information Store schema for the i2 Analyze deployment, and load it into Schema Designer.
Make your changes to the schema and its associated charting schemes, and then save the file.
Note: Schema Designer does not validate whether your changes are compatible with the deployed schema. Validation takes place when you apply the changes to your deployment.
Run the following commands on the Liberty server to update the database and application to conform to the updated schema.
```
setup -t stopLiberty
setup -t updateSchema
setup -t deployLiberty
setup -t startLiberty
```
The command recognizes that you modified the schema, determines whether the changes are valid for the running Information Store, and then applies them. If the changes are not valid, the command displays messages to explain the problems.
Note: If you customized the Information Store creation process by specifying create-database="false" in the topology file and running the scripts yourself, this command works in the same way. Execution stops so that you can customize the changes to the Information Store. After you apply the changes, you can run the task again to complete the process.

What to do next

Because you can make only additive changes to an Information Store schema that you modify through this procedure, it is not mandatory to change other parts of your deployment. However, to take full advantage of your additions, consider the following complementary changes.

To enable the Information Store to ingest data for the new item types and property types, modify your ingestion artifacts. See Information Store data ingestion.
If your deployment includes definitions of the property values of merged i2 Analyze records, you must update your merged property values definition views. See Define how property values of merged records are calculated.
If you want users to see the new types in quick search filters, edit the configuration file that controls them. See Setting up search results filtering.
If your deployment includes highlight queries, you can update them for the new item and property types. For more information, see Deploying highlight queries.